Printing Organs and Tissues

Published on Wednesday, September 24, 2014

UBC affiliated Aspect Biosystems was recently featured in BC Business! Aspect’s CEO Konrad Walus explained his vision of the future, paving the way towards a new business model for discovering and testing new drugs, and touching on our healthcare system reliance on organ donors.

“While printed hearts are still 10 to 15 years away, by Walus’s estimation, there will be many applications for Aspect’s machines along the way. Currently, the main focus is on the discovery and testing of new drugs. By creating functional models of specific cellular structures like airways, livers or even tumours, Aspect hopes to fast track the often-expensive process of clinical and preclinical drug trials. They’ve already secured a partnership with a top-10 pharmaceutical company, and are in talks with others.

“Because we can make [specific structures] very repeatedly, you can have thousands of these models that are basically the same,” Walus explains. He says this would limit the amount of animal testing drug companies require, and reduce the risk of taking a potentially ineffective or dangerous drug all the way to clinical trial—and save drug companies a lot of money.”

Konrad and his team completed e@UBC’s Lean LaunchPad Accelerator program back in 2013 and was recently financed by e@UBC’s Seed Fund! Read more on Aspect Biosystems here.